Keeble’s Bush

Scientific Reserve and Forest Restoration Project

We are stood on the hill looking down upon the finest remnant

of indigenous lowland forest (podocarp-broadleaf) in the district.

It is under attack from old man’s beard, and blackberry etcetera,

invasive wandering willy, possums, stoats, rats, mice and from us.

                                    The botanist in muddy boots had great hopes of                                    

                                    avian flu but it came to nothing this time round.

            The only northern rata has just died.

            Nobody knows how the bush unzips.

            There is no reason for a tree to die.

            But they do die. Nobody knows why.

                                    The botanist in muddy boots asserts that if humanity

                                    was extinct this land would be claimed by wilding pine.

We step in under cover through the shelter belt with grasses underfoot

passing onto the original bush duff that holds the secret we can’t crack.

            Nobody knows how to put it all back together again.

            We don’t know, can’t know, every element it contains.        

            And on my muddy boots might be the spore that splits

            the crystal of this ecosystem apart. It is somehow all my fault.                      

                                                The botanist in muddy boots strokes a kawakawa

                                                for cryptic caterpillars on the heart-shaped leaves.

This patch survives because of the useful spring, there is always water

flowing down the hill. When the stream that enters from above is dry,

when it fails, still the water flows although the spring cannot be found.

There is an ungraspable metaphor, a sunlit hymn in a long ago church.

                                                The botanist in muddy boots speaks of naive birds

                                                as the fantail perks and flutes about our progress.